The technology disclosed herein generally relates to fiber optical networks that enable communication between electrical components.
Fiber optic bidirectional transceivers have been successfully deployed in avionics networks to replace copper cable for size, weight and power reduction. In addition, large-scale high-speed (e.g., greater than 1 Gbits/sec) switch networks have been proposed for a future generation of airplanes using a large number of single-fiber bidirectional optical links in the airplane.
The existing bidirectional transceivers used in some avionics networks require two wavelengths to operate. This creates a burden on designers and installers of large-scale switch network systems to keep track of the bidirectional transceivers with the correct matching wavelength pairs in each fiber optical link. For some large-scale switch networks designed for use in avionics systems, keeping track of the matching wavelength pair is a labor-intensive and time-consuming process which requires frequent re-work when a wrong wavelength transceiver is installed in the airplane's optical link.
Another bidirectional transceiver has been proposed in which the transmit and receive optical signals have the same wavelength. This proposed transceiver has a beam splitter installed at the optical subassembly (OSA), but this design needs to use an absorber to reduce reflection of the local laser. The large cross-talk and scattering of the optical reflection in the OSA would disable the bidirectional optical link operation. Therefore it would be inadvisable to produce a bidirectional transceiver based on this beam splitter design.